This flight was delayed for 3 days—here’s everything that went wrong

Seemingly everything

A shiver went up our spine the minute we saw the words “70-hour delay.” On Thursday, 1 November, British Airways Flight 2036 was scheduled to leave Orlando at 7:25 p.m., getting in to London’s Gatwick Airport at around 7:30 a.m. the following morning. But passengers didn’t actually arrive in London until 11:30 a.m. on November 3, after a mechanical delay, tornadoes, another mechanical issue, and a diversion piled up, making this one of the most drawn-out flight experiences we’ve seen in a while. To break down exactly what broke down, here’s a timeline of how BA2036 turned into a nightmare.

Round One: Mechanical Delay

Passengers boarded the plane as usual on Thursday, expecting to be chowing down on Cadbury eggs in eight hours. But when a mechanical problem arose—caused by the brakes’ heat sensor, which determines whether brakes are cooled enough for a safe take-off, according to The Independent—passengers instead had to stay put on board for more than two hours, according to one passenger’s tweet. And, as is always the case with runway delays, they had to stay in their seats, with little food or water to tide them over. “Why on earth load a plane of it is not capable of flying. Been offered one cup of water and a packet of pretzels so far,” passenger Tim Humphries shared on Twitter.

After a few hours, passengers disembarked the plane and received news that the flight had been delayed a whopping 27 hours, while the spare part was flown over on British Airways Flight 2037 from Gatwick to Orlando. They weren’t to spend the night in the airport (no, that would come later), and British Airways put them up in the Rosen Shingle Creek, a hotel about 15 minutes from the airport. By this time, it was well past midnight.

To make matters worse, weather conditions, including tornadoes, delayed that incoming flight from London, meaning the spare parts and the British engineer flown over to fix Flight 2036’s plane were also delayed even further. And so, 27-plus hours later, the travellers trundled back to Orlando’s MCO airport to hop back on the plane.

Round Two: It Wasn’t Quite Fixed

Flight 2036 finally got off the ground Friday evening (🎉), but an hour into the flight, the pilots realized there were still mechanical issues, the BBC reports. “The captain said over the tannoy [PA system], the original problem had come back,” passenger Sarah Wilson told the BBC. So, instead of continuing over the Atlantic Ocean for nearly 4,000 more miles, the plane was diverted to John F. Kennedy International Airport “as a precaution,” a British Airways spokesperson told the Orlando Sentinel.

Round Three: The Floor

Once at JFK, though, new problems arose. Thanks to the New York City marathon, many hotels were booked up, leaving limited options for British Airways to put up the passengers, which, by the way, they’re required to do by EU law. Many travelers, though, shared photos of others sleeping on the floor and on top of suitcases—and reported poor communication from the airline as to what they were supposed to do next. The airline said that “customers were rebooked where possible and while there were limited hotel rooms available, our teams on the ground cared for customers in our first-class lounge, providing bedding, food, and drinks to ensure they were comfortable during their stay,” the Orlando Sentinel reported. (EU-based airlines are also required to cover reasonable meal expenses or provide food.)

Finally back at LGW after the worst 3 days. I can’t think of strong enough words to describe the disgusting @British_Airways customer service we received. My daughter also had to spend her 2nd birthday in JFK airport. Exhausted and angry. #ba2036

After hours of delays spent between hotels, planes, and airports, the 200-odd passengers of the flight finally made it back to Gatwick after British Airways sent an entirely new plane to JFK on Saturday night. The plane arrived in London around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, according to The Independent, more than two days after its original arrival time.

So What Would We Do?

Honestly, when Traveler’s editors heard about these passengers’ plight, we thought “Why didn’t they just switch flights?” But this situation isn’t that simple. The piecemeal approach to this delay, from the mechanical error to the weather delay, to the diversion, means that it didn’t pile on all at once, but slowly built up. “I’m the person that (usually, almost always) sticks with my flight, no matter how bad it gets—because I can’t imagine, you know, how bad it will actually get. Plus, don’t I have to pay to change my flight? And who knows if that one will get delayed? I keep sticking with it and sticking with it until, 15 hours after I was supposed to, I’ve arrived,” said editor Katherine LaGrave.

What we all can agree on is that if we were on that flight we would immediately file for flight compensation under EU regulation 261. The law requires that when travelers are on a more than 1,500-mile flight delayed more than four hours to or from an EU airport on an airline based in the EU because of a mechanical problem, a plane change, or a crew shortage (woof, there’s a lot of hyper-specificity here), the airline gives them up to €600 (or $685). LaGrave has a full explainer here—but all you have to do to get a travel voucher or cash is to file a complaint with British Airways (or your airline).